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Friday, 25 November 2016

One evening after dinner several years ago, I sat at our kitchen table savoring a delicious piece of apple pie.

Our son
Samuel was playing nearby. Feeling generous and benevolent, I approached
him with a forkful behind my back and asked him to open his mouth and
close his eyes. Inserting the pie, I waited eagerly for his reaction.

He
chewed, then scrunched up his face and began crying. Shocked, I asked
him what was wrong. Between sobs, he whimpered, “I wanted ice cream!”

Desire Diminishes Gratitude

That
story is a parable of how I have often lived my life. My focus on what I
don’t have has blinded me to all that I have received from God. Desire
has diminished gratitude. And I know I’m not alone. Many of us live so
focused on what we don’t have that we miss the present gifts we could be
enjoying. We’re blessed and discontented, with lowered joy and
heightened dissatisfaction.

Singles
pine for marriage; couples for freedom. The unemployed long for jobs;
workers for weekends. Childless couples yearn for a baby; parents for
sleep. We want what we don’t have — until we have it. And then we want
something more or something else. Men lust after images of women who are
not their wives. Women envy other moms with well-adjusted children,
immaculate houses, and successful careers. We live in a world of no
thanks, almost physically unable to enjoy what we have.

Birds in the Bush

Our
ingratitude is encouraged and enflamed by the modern consumeristic
culture, which is set up to create a state of permanent discontentment —
and is wildly successful at doing so. A 2006 article in the London Times
entitled “The Haves and Have Yachts” distinguished between the “merely
rich” (the top 1% of the population, with an annual income around $1
million) and the “super rich” (those who earned beween $4.5 and 20
million annually).

The
article reported, “There is little love lost between the groups, with
the former not only envious of the latter’s fortunes, but also resentful
of the means of acquisition.” The merely rich were described in the
article as “irrelevant,” “impoverished,” “pathetic,” and “struggling to
keep up.” This is a group defined as making at least $1 million per year, and yet they’re unhappy, insecure, and discontent.

The bird
in your hand may be worth two in the bush, but you won’t be very
thankful for it if you’re consumed with longing for the other two.

Enjoying Gifts, Not the Giver

Of
course, we’re not always moping for what we don’t have. We’re not afraid
to enjoy the good things of this world. Billions of people daily
experience trillions of moments of pleasure, joy, and satisfaction. But
this creates another massive problem: Most of those moments are enjoyed
without any response of thankfulness to God.

Even
when we don’t miss the gift, we often miss the Giver. This thanklessness
deeply troubled the apostle Paul, who diagnosed it as an act of
rebellion against God: “Although they knew God, they did not honor him
as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21).

Paul
connected the sin of thanklessness with idolatry. Instead of thanking
God for what he gives, we assign ultimate value to things God made,
worshiping and thanking them instead of God. It’s what Israel did at
Mount Sinai: claiming the golden calf had brought them out of Egypt,
they gave honor and thanks to a pile of gold.

Centerpiece This Thursday

God
created food — and, by extension, every other good thing — in order to
be received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:3–5). God designed a great
circle of thanksgiving: we get the gift, and he gets the gratitude. When
we receive gifts without returning thanks, it’s a massive exercise in
missing the point.

Millions
of Americans will sit down this week before a splendid dinner God
created, but will not thank him for it. Instead, many of us will
overeat, showing our devotion to some food goddess, and then collapse
into a soft chair to worship the great football gods. The guy who gets
the winning touchdown will almost certainly receive more praise (and
definitely more headlines) than the God who made the whole day possible.
The delicious turkey will be praised more than the one who created
every living thing.

As Christians, we can commend the goodness of God by cultivating thankful hearts this week,
and year round. Let’s examine our lives for patterns of thanklessness.
Are there God-given gifts (health, friendships, accomplishments,
material blessings) that we haven’t been thanking God for? Let’s be
different this Thanksgiving, and celebrate God’s goodness by returning
thanks.